1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting head unit provided with a liquid ejecting head which ejects a liquid from nozzles, a liquid ejecting apparatus, a wiping method of the liquid ejecting head, and a printing method.
2. Related Art
Among liquid ejecting apparatuses which eject a liquid onto an ejection target medium, for example, there is known an ink jet recording apparatus which performs printing on a recording medium (an ejection target medium) such as paper or a recording sheet by ejecting an ink as the liquid.
In an ink jet recording head in which such an ink jet recording apparatus is installed, since ink droplets are ejected from nozzles onto an ejection target medium, due to ink adhering to the vicinity of the nozzles of a liquid ejecting surface which ejects the ink droplets, or due to adhered ink solidifying, for example, there is a problem in that the ejection direction of the ink droplets is not stable, or a problem in that an ejection fault such as the ink droplets not being ejected occurs.
Therefore, ink, fluff, dust, paper dust, or the like which is adhered to the liquid ejecting surface is cleaned by wiping the liquid ejecting surface using a plate-shaped wiper which is formed of an elastic material such as rubber.
However, the viscosity of the ink which is adhered to a nozzle surface increases due to drying, and there is a concern that ejection faults will arise in the nozzles due to the increased-viscosity ink being rubbed into the nozzles by the wiper.
Therefore, a system is proposed in which, before performing the wiping using the wiper, rubbing of the viscosity-increased ink is suppressed by causing the ink to seep from the nozzles and dissolving the viscosity-increased ink using the ink which seeps out (for example, refer to JP-A-7-96604).
However, even if the inside of the nozzles is rendered a positive pressure and the entry of the viscosity-increased ink, paper dust, bubbles, or the like is prevented by wiping the nozzle surface while causing the ink to flow from the nozzle, there is a problem in that wasteful consumption of the ink increases.
These problems are present not only in an ink jet recording head unit provided with an ink jet recording head, but similarly in a liquid ejecting head unit provided with a liquid ejecting head which ejects a liquid other than an ink.